obliged to do it ever since he was a child selling papers
on the corner. But he still clings to the office that gave
him his start, although he makes more money in a single week
outside the office than his salary would amount to in half a
year. He says that this is a job that does not interfere
with his work."

Such is Blackie. Surely the oddest friend a woman
ever had. He possesses a genius for friendship, and a
wonderful understanding of suffering, born of those years
of hardship and privation. Each learned the other's
story, bit by bit, in a series of confidences exchanged
during that peaceful, beatific period that follows just
after the last edition has gone down. Blackie's little
cubby-hole of an office is always blue with smoke, and
cluttered with a thousand odds and ends--photographs,
souvenirs, boxing-gloves, a litter of pipes and tobacco,
a wardrobe of dust-covered discarded coats and hats, and
Blackie in the midst of it all, sunk in the depths of his
swivel chair, and looking like an amiable brown gnome, or
a cheerful little joss-house god come to life. There is
in him an uncanny wisdom which only the streets can
teach. He is one of those born newspaper men who could
not live out of sight of the ticker-tape, and the
copy-hook and the proof-sheet.

"Y' see, girl, it's like this here," Blackie
explained one day. "W're all workin' for some good
reason. A few of us are workin' for the glory of it, and
most of us are workin' t' eat, and lots of us are